Enter The Matrix: Slice out and get the best part from your hard drives

[fritzman]

Mate... I told you it would be sub-6ms.

That's an awesome result... welldone.

+++ edit... lol... I just noticed your cpu usage... -1%.
Now that's cool!

Hey... would you mind splitting the s/shots up and cropping them though, down to the size of each of the frames, that way everyone can view it without any issues. Tks

 

[Audioaficionado]

To capture just one window/frame on the clipboard, alt+print scrn and only that part is captured. Save it as a .jpg in IrFanView. Do this for each individual frame you want to capture.

Just 'print scrn' will capture the entire desktop.

 

[Baby3ater666]

Hey guys I loaded up some new results with a RAID 0 of 93GB, what do you guys think? Should I maybe try lowering it a couple more? I wonder if I would be able to hit a little under 5 ms access time

 

[fritzman]

I'd be surprised if it came down below 5ms, in fact, I'd be surprised if you got it down to 5ms. For 2 x platter drives... that's darned quick.

How does it feel? Must be really snappy.

Also... have you enabled write back cache in the Matrix Manager yet? I'd have expected those burst rates to be higher.

 

[Baby3ater666]

I do have Write back cache enabled and yeah it does seem a little slow but heh. Just took my RAID 0 down to 85GB and got 5.1 ms access time

 

[Baby3ater666]

Here's the recent bench

 

[Baby3ater666]

Here's a HD tach bench. Do you guys think I'll benefit from going any lower? I still need space for my games though

 

[fritzman]

The difference between 5.1 & 5.2 is negligible at best, so I would have the size you feel you need (back to 100Gb or even try 120) and leave it at that.

 

[Baby3ater666]

yeah I'll probably go back to 100. The quickest access time I've achieved was 5.1 with 75GB.

 

[Baby3ater666]

Alright well I put my slice back at 100GB and haven't noticed a difference except that I'll be able to put more of my games on here! The second slice is RAID 1 but I have yet to determine how I'll really make much use of it. Comptiplating between that and another possible RAID 0 slice seeing that I have an external hard drive for back ups Thanks a lot Fritzman for all your patience and guidance in helping me achieve a snappier system!

 

[Seregaknorrr]

Hey guys, wha'ts the best way to recover matrix raid ?
I had a raid 0 with OS and raid 10 for the data. now HDD failed. Raid 0 failed,raid 10 degraded. I replaced the failed drive today, but i'm not sure how do i get everything up and running again. I didn't have an image of raid 0 so i'll need to do a windows reinstallation, question is how not to mess anything and how to make new drive a member of raid 0 and 10.

Any suggestions?

 

[fritzman]

Hey guys, wha'ts the best way to recover matrix raid ?
I had a raid 0 with OS and raid 10 for the data. now HDD failed. Raid 0 failed,raid 10 degraded. I replaced the failed drive today, but i'm not sure how do i get everything up and running again. I didn't have an image of raid 0 so i'll need to do a windows reinstallation, question is how not to mess anything and how to make new drive a member of raid 0 and 10.

Any suggestions?

You can safely delete the raid0 in the Ctrl+I as it boots up, and then re-create it as it was. The Raid10 should rebuild itself once back in windows.

 

[Seregaknorrr]

Tnanks fritzman, that worked with no issues.
Can you recommend a good recovery plan in case of a failure in the future, can you share how's your system partitioned? This is what i was thinking for setup: "C" raid 0 for system, "D" raid 10 data, and "E" raid10 that has a clone image of "C", but i'm not sure if i'll be able to boot off of that "E" partition automatically when raid 0 fails...

 

[dribblesnort]

I'm happy with my Caviar Black 1TB Drives. Access time is improved by 25% over the single drive scores, and throughput is pretty nice. And, it's a nearly 800GB array so I can load tons of stuff on it.

 

[fritzman]

Tnanks fritzman, that worked with no issues.
Can you recommend a good recovery plan in case of a failure in the future, can you share how's your system partitioned? This is what i was thinking for setup: "C" raid 0 for system, "D" raid 10 data, and "E" raid10 that has a clone image of "C", but i'm not sure if i'll be able to boot off of that "E" partition automatically when raid 0 fails...

Cheers mate... just got home.

Re the recovery boot... I use Acronis True Image Home and it's great.

First thing I did, was once I created the raid10, I made a partition slightly larger than my raid0. From an old single raptor, I did an XP install, and installed Acronis. Booting into XP, I used Acronis to take an image of my raid0. I then reinstated in to the rescue partition on the raid10.

Rebooted, and then into BIOS and change the boot drive to the one on the raid10, and let it sort itself out, and from then on, all was fine.

I deliberately moved all my Doc's, my Outlook.pst and all my data to the big raid10 drive, so no matter which I am booting from, everything works the same, meaning if I drop a drive, I just change the boot drive in bios, and then carry on.

Hope that's clear enough... if not, drop me a PM.

 

[TypeSHhhh]

Hey Guys,

I just started working with Raid 0 with more than 2 drives and here are my results.

I am running 3 x 7200.12 Seagate 500 GB drives in Raid 0 with a 100 GB partition for the OS etc and the rest RAID 0 as well for all the data as well (its just for downloads so i figure if it dies I will just download again).

Please let me know what you guys think and if the results are good, would I get a whole lot better with total 5x drives with raid 0 and 100 gb partition for OS, what is the optimal OS partition size?

thanks

 

[fritzman]

Hey Guys,

I just started working with Raid 0 with more than 2 drives and here are my results.

I am running 3 x 7200.12 Seagate 500 GB drives in Raid 0 with a 100 GB partition for the OS etc and the rest RAID 0 as well for all the data as well (its just for downloads so i figure if it dies I will just download again).

Please let me know what you guys think and if the results are good, would I get a whole lot better with total 5x drives with raid 0 and 100 gb partition for OS, what is the optimal OS partition size?

thanks

Hi mate & W E L C O M E

Those results look about right... the access time is sittong where it is because of the size & type of drives you are using, and also is affected by the size of that 1st slice., but still... I'm sure it feels nice & snappy.

You've obviously turn write back cache on by the burst rate, so I would say you've set it up well.

Re more drives... You'll definitely see an increase by adding a 4th... in my experience though, once you get above that, the gains aren't as obvious, but they are still there. Probably the 'smoothest' feeling rigs I ever ran, were my 6 x drive raid0/raid10 ones... did it with a couple of different drive types (80Gb Hitachi's & 250 or 500Gb Seagates iirc) and both were great.

If you stay with your 100Gb slice 1st off, and then make whatever is left into the 2nd slice... as you add more drives, you are using less to get to the 100Gb's total, so the gains will add up alright.

Have fun.

 

[Doctor Lo]

I´ve been reading for quite a while about RAID and Intel Matrix... but there is still something quite simple (I think), that I dont really get:

Whats the difference between a RAID 0 array created from my BIOS, and one using the intel matrix program ?? (both using ICH10R)
Im getting 2 brand new WD caviar blacks (640 gb), I want the whole thing in RAID 0 (I have another caviar blue for back-ups), and Im going to do a fresh windows 7 install on them (so, everything is going to be done from scratch and there isn o need for the 2 kinds of RAID in 2 disk feature of the intel matrix).
What do I use if I just want the maximun performance out of my RAID 0 array ?? Whats the difference ?? or it is indeed the same thing ??

Thanks!!

 

[fritzman]

I´ve been reading for quite a while about RAID and Intel Matrix... but there is still something quite simple (I think), that I dont really get:

Whats the difference between a RAID 0 array created from my BIOS, and one using the intel matrix program ?? (both using ICH10R)
Im getting 2 brand new WD caviar blacks (640 gb), I want the whole thing in RAID 0 (I have another caviar blue for back-ups), and Im going to do a fresh windows 7 install on them (so, everything is going to be done from scratch and there isn o need for the 2 kinds of RAID in 2 disk feature of the intel matrix).
What do I use if I just want the maximun performance out of my RAID 0 array ?? Whats the difference ?? or it is indeed the same thing ??

Thanks!!

W E L C O M E to the Doc!

It is indeed the same thing, except on boards equipped with the ICHxR controllers... you have the ability to do something different (i.e. split your types of arrays on the same disks) should you so choose...

In your case... you have two options.

1. Raid0 using the whole or part of both drives (part-drive = short-stroking) and doing nothing else with them.

2. Raid0 for pat of the drives and Raid1 for the rest... afaik that can only be done using the Matrix technology, hence all the excitement. In this case, you could for instance take a clone of your Raid0 (O/S drive) and have it in a small partition at the front of your Raid1, then have a 2nd partition just for storage. In that way, if you had a drive fail, (your Raid0 is toast) you can go into BIOS and change the boot drive to the Raid1 partition1, and you are away again until you replace the 2nd drive.

Hope that makes sense and helps.

PS... In order to get the MAXIMUM performance out of two platter drives... have your Raid0 drive as small as you can. Because you create it first, and small, it chooses the fastest part of the drive first, so you get the best performance. The Matrix, allows you to do something with the remainder of the drives.

B

 

[Doctor Lo]

W E L C O M E to the Doc!

It is indeed the same thing, except on boards equipped with the ICHxR controllers... you have the ability to do something different (i.e. split your types of arrays on the same disks) should you so choose...

In your case... you have two options.

1. Raid0 using the whole or part of both drives (part-drive = short-stroking) and doing nothing else with them.

2. Raid0 for pat of the drives and Raid1 for the rest... afaik that can only be done using the Matrix technology, hence all the excitement. In this case, you could for instance take a clone of your Raid0 (O/S drive) and have it in a small partition at the front of your Raid1, then have a 2nd partition just for storage. In that way, if you had a drive fail, (your Raid0 is toast) you can go into BIOS and change the boot drive to the Raid1 partition1, and you are away again until you replace the 2nd drive.

Hope that makes sense and helps.

PS... In order to get the MAXIMUM performance out of two platter drives... have your Raid0 drive as small as you can. Because you create it first, and small, it chooses the fastest part of the drive first, so you get the best performance. The Matrix, allows you to do something with the remainder of the drives.

B

Thank you very much fritzman! And thanks for the welcome message

Yes, I was also thinking about doing what you suggested: doing a smaller RAID 0 (lets say 10% ??), for the OS. But then, I do NOT need to do anything different with the rest, I would like to have it in RAID 0 as well (since I have a 3rd disk for backups/images), so.. in this situation, does it have any advantage to use matrix ??? If I just RAID 0 the whole thing.. and make just a smaller partition first, wouldnt it be like short stroking in that partion, and still, having a good performing "normal" RAID 0 in the rest ??